Vivekananda on Vedas - (part 5)

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We are presenting the following work by Sister Gayatriprana.

Your comments are welcome. Parts 1, 2, 3 and 4 were posted earlier this is part 5. jay..Vivekananda Centre London

 

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA ON THE VEDAS AND UPANISADS

By Sister Gayatriprana

 

part 5 This rather formidable list is an attempt to cover all possible bases of human knowledge and experience. It is not one which I preconceived and imposed on the materials, but rather the algorithm, as you might say, which emerged from the data when it was all put together. Its validity and applicability are questions too recondite to be entered into here - that task will be tackled elsewhere. For the moment, I put it on record as a set of criteria of inclusiveness and completeness with which I have evaluated and developed this compilation. Once discovered, I consciously applied it to the final selection and overall organization of the materials, trying to give East and West due representation in the commentaries, as also each of the four yogas, "this" and "the other" worlds, evolution and involution; and finally, occasional passages of Swami Vivekananda’s poetry which, I felt, encapsulate the very essence of his commentary on a particular mantra.

 

This attempt at inclusiveness and wholeness has necessarily meant the utilization of materials which are not, at first sight, strictly quotes or comments directly on the Upanisads. The bulk of such material was delivered in the West, where Swami Vivekananda was much more freewheeling in his translations and interpretations of the Vedantic texts than he was in India. Fortunately, there are several Western lectures from 1896 explicitly on individual Upanisads which provide a baseline for Swami Vivekananda’s handling of Upanisadic mantras. From his renditions there we can extrapolate to other materials, especially the copious California lectures of 1900, where the swami "took off", as it were, into radically new dimensions with fascinating new angles on his Vedantic commentaries. Again, in some mantras, we find that Swamiji, in his definite commentaries on the Upanishads establishes certain coinages of his own - such as soul of our souls in Kena Upanisad, v.4, or work for work’s sake in Gita 2.47, which have such a life of their own that I have included a few other passages containing them, even if not strictly related to a commentary on the Upanisads. The thinking here was to highlight and underscore the swami’s line of thought, always in the framework of our search for the total picture of Swami Vivekananda’s own version of Vedanta. Again, probably as part and parcel of his holistic approach, possibly because he was almost always quoting off the cuff, Swami Vivekananda not infrequently blends two Upanisadic mantras into one, or combines an Upanisadic mantra with another text, such as Sri Sankara’s Vivekacudamani or Nirvanasatkam. Where such an amalgamation has occurred, I mention the fact and use the materials in both of the sources.

 

d) The Broad Picture: Swami Vivekananda’s Introduction to the Vedas

Having laid out the materials according to all of these criteria, I clearly saw that Swami Vivekananda’s "commentaries" are power-packed, often counterintuitive, even controversial. Perhaps the main reason for this impression is that he deals so often with what has traditionally been considered "secular" concerns, flying in the face of traditional religious discourse. He thus sets up a powerful voltage between the conservative religious tradition and his deep concern with the burning problems of the contemporary world.

So strong was this sense of tension in the commentaries that I decided to embark on a compilation of Swami Vivekananda’s general remarks on the Vedas and Upanisads. I thought that this would provide, in a less aphoristic way than in the commentaries themselves, his basic approach to Vedanta and how he integrates it with the contemporary world. I discovered huge amounts of material which, I felt, lent itself to presentation as a historical narrative in what I have called The Introduction. There Swami Vivekananda traces Vedanta from its origin with the Vedic seers and the culture that supported them to Buddha, Sri Sankaracarya, and on to the present day. Laying out the basic tenets of Vedanta on God, humanity and the world as well as its characteristic practices for developing a spiritual approach to life, the Introduction traces how different emphases and interpretations emerged in response to the unfolding historical process. In particular, the introductory materials bring out the problems and conditions of the modern world, and just how Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda propose to address them and mold them to the Vedantic paradigm.

to be continued.....